I caught the last 20 minutes or so of This American Life today. The story was about a Louisiana state lawmaker who was asked by her parish sheriff to sponsor legislation banning toy guns from schools because with school shootings up he doesn’t want his officers mistakenly called to a school and shooting a kid with a toy gun by mistake. Seems pretty simple, right? The lawmaker is a republican woman who carries a loaded Glock in her purse and had a reputation as strong 2A advocate. But when gun folks heard about it they turned on her. It became the talk of gun rights radio shows and even the NRA’s 24-hour cable channel. Ultimately she had to withdraw her bill and she’s now labeled a RINO, all over an attempt to protect innocent kids from mistakenly getting shot. I won’t tell you why because I’m sure you can guess why the gun nuts (mostly GOP now) opposed her.

I know there are responsible gun owners and enthusiasts here. I’m not one. My purpose isn’t to criticize gun ownership here, but rather to point to the extreme paranoia on the right and its close relationship to the 2A issue. (The reporter tried to draw an equivalency to liberals and abortion, by the way….)